Bryan Garaventa wrote:
> simple HTML tags, which does, to me at least, fit the definition of
> bootstrapping, where a complex series of actions occurs from one simple
> trigger.
The etymology of the computer science use of bootstrapping is that one
is pulling oneself up by ones boot laces (something that it physically
impossible of course).
It is actually a term that that is well known to the general public,
albeit that the popular term is a contraction of the full word, and the
public don't know the real significance of the word. When one reboots a
computer one is really re-bootstrapping, or, more fully, re-bootstrap
loading it.
It is not restricted to loading. If you want to create the first native
compiler for a new hardware architecture, you first cross compile it,
and then compile it using itself on the target architecture. That is
also called bootstrapping, because the compiler is being used to create
itself.
--
David Woolley
Emails are not formal business letters, whatever businesses may want.
RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of spam,
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